Imperfect Whole Grain Bread

My whole grain bread is definitely still a work in progress.  The end-goal is to create a loaf that is dense with grains, but that's not sunken in the middle - and not soaking wet.

I'm writing it down here because I don't want to forget what I did so far - and because a friend, who tasted the bread, actually asked for the recipe.



So far, I've been making this bread in my bread maker, just because it's simpler for the moment.

The base recipe I use is the French Bread recipe that came with my very first bread maker.  It has served as a great base for lots of different recipes in the years.

That French Bread recipe calls for

1.25 cups of water
1.5 tsp of salt
1 tbsp sugar
3.5 cups of bread flour
1 tbsp yeast

Then you run it on a "basic" program (ca. 3 hr long) in the bread maker.

Shortly after I got my first bread maker, I started adding things to my French bread:
a) Cheese - very good idea, gave it a little more fat so it dried out less quickly
b) Olives - tasted great
c) salsa - gave it a little zing
d) Cheese, olives and salsa - great with spaghetti sauce.

You get the picture.

I also started replacing some of the bread flour with whole wheat or rye flour with good results.  (Usually, I'd keep 2 cups of the bread flour and add 1.5 cups of a different flour. )

My whole grain bread started a lot differently at first, but it morphed into a variation of the above bread in the end.

I bought every grain I could find in my local Good Foods coop for this loaf: Barley, bulgur, wheat, sunflower seeds, oats, flax seed - whatever they had in the bulk grain section went in there.

I mixed the grains together before I measured out 1 cup of the mix to soak in water.  The water is heated to a boil, the taken off the burner.  The grains are added to the hot water and allowed to soak for a about 30 min. After soaking, I put a strainer on top of a pot and drain the water from the grains.  I keep the water for later use.

The the breadmaker add
1 cup of water (use the water from above)
1.5 tsp of salt
1 tbsp sugar
2 cups of bread flour
1.5 cups of rye flour
1 tbsp yeast
3 tbsp of wheat gluten
2 cups of the soaked grains (that's what the 1 cup of dry grains works out to)

Set bread maker to "wheat" and keep your fingers crossed....

Actually, this one's not bad...